


It Rains When You're Here And It Rains When You're Gone

by readbetweenthelions



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Break Up, F/M, M/M, Multi, Suicide, extreme sadness so watch out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-08
Updated: 2012-09-08
Packaged: 2017-11-13 20:23:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readbetweenthelions/pseuds/readbetweenthelions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It’s not the same without Pepper,” says Bruce hollowly.<br/>“No,” Tony says. “It’s not the same without Pepper.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Rains When You're Here And It Rains When You're Gone

**Author's Note:**

> whoops i accidentally wrote all the sads. each little "section" is three sentences, because three-sentence fics are a medium i love working with (it keeps me from rambling on forever!) big thanks to bonnie for being an awesome beta and an even more awesome inspiration - hope this horrible angst makes you proud! tswift lyric title because bonnie.

“It’s not the same without Pepper,” says Bruce hollowly.

“No,” Tony says. “It’s not the same without Pepper.”

***

Bruce remembers when it was all new, when they lay afterwards in a sweaty contented heap, each of them buzzing with the rush of it all. He remembers Tony’s hands on his thighs and Pepper’s lips on his neck when they first came together like this, and though it still sends a little thrill through him, it’s tinged with sadness now. The novelty of it never really wore off for Bruce, but he guesses it did for them.

***

And there it was, just like that - with his glasses at the very tip of his nose and one eyebrow arched, Bruce looked up at Tony skeptically. This look, it drove Tony crazy, because it was frustrating and arousing and altogether infuriating, and he hated it and loved it all at once. Tony never knew where he stood with this look, and he used to like the mystery.

***

Bruce was a storm raging inside but utterly tranquil without. Pepper watched him as he was perfectly still, knowing that inside everything in him is constantly moving and shifting and shaking and nothing is ever for sure. She put her hands on the back of his neck and kissed him steady.

***

Fire - it was like fire. It was the warmth between their touches, the orange of her hair and the heat of his electric heart. Loving Pepper was like starting a wildfire; the smallest spark had started it and now it blazed out of control.

***

It wasn’t that they didn’t love each other anymore. It was more that each loved the others a little too much and a little too hard. They were all worn out.

***

It was those big, broad hands on her hips as they danced at one of Tony’s galas that he didn’t attend that made Pepper see Bruce. Later, it was his sandpaper stubble and the heat of his body when she pressed close to him. She doesn’t exactly want to leave it.

***

Loving Tony was the hardest thing in her life, and for a long time she couldn’t imagine not doing it. Pepper packed her things in a surprisingly short amount of time. She didn’t know what had changed.

***

For Bruce at least, liking Tony was easy, but loving him was something you grew into. With Pepper it had been all at once, like really falling in love. But Bruce felt like if he had grown into Tony’s love, he was now growing out of it.

***

“Forget it,” Pepper says, “Forget all of it. I’m gone.”

She leaves behind only a few red hairs on the bedroom floor and the memory of her pressed close to them.

***

“I’m trying, Tony,” Bruce says, “But I can’t.”

“I need you to,” Tony says, strained and beginning to crack.

Bruce stands.

***

“You could come with me, Bruce,” Pepper says. “It could be you and me.”

Bruce could, but he won’t.

***

Tony aches for Pepper; soft, slender Pepper who had always been there whether he knew it or not. Her fire had warmed his cold electric heart up, and her snowy skin had cooled his searing brain down. He wonders if the years they spent together were even real.

***

The last time Bruce was on a plane, his fingers were curled around Tony’s wrist. He feels the loss acutely as he scans the clouds below the wing. Bruce wouldn’t be able to forget the glow of the arc reactor even in the depths of a disease-worn village in Tibet.

***

Pepper feels too small and too large all at once as she lies on her back on the queen-sized hotel bed. She’d gotten used to the bed she shared with Tony and Bruce, and she’d gotten used to their heat and weight and presence while she slept. There was an ache in her, but the distance between her and them was a cool breeze drifting up from a yawning chasm.

***

The house is too big, and so is the Tower. Tony buys a tiny one-room cottage on the beach but the beach reminds him of Pepper and he sells it a week later. The sand he’s still picking out of his toes two weeks after strikes him as a bitter metaphor.

***

“Are you okay?” Bruce says into the phone. The silence stretches and Bruce wishes things were the other way around, that Pepper was asking _him_ like she always did. 

“I think I’m alright,” she says, but it’s clear she isn’t.

***

The rush of wind as he flies drowns out the babble of angry voices in his head. They all sound like Pepper and Bruce, the last scenes of them replaying in his head. The pressing of the suit against him is the only thing that feels normal anymore.

***

STARK. She sees his name every day when she walks into his office, but she hasn’t spoken to him in months. It could be worse, Pepper supposes.

***

Glass smashes against the bottom of the trash can. The amber of his favorite scotch reminded him too much of Pepper’s hair, so he switched to vodka. Tony hasn’t said a word in three weeks.

***

Bruce arranges his medical supplies in order of size. Scalpels, forceps, dilators, retractors; shining and sterile, in a neat little row. The equally clean pistol is separate but it seems closer than it should.

***

Tony’s voice is hoarse and slurred, and Bruce flinches from it as if he could smell the alcohol on Tony’s breath through the phone. “Bruce, I want to see you again, can I visit?”

“Don’t bother,” Bruce says heatedly, but he doesn’t exactly hang up the phone.

***

It feels like palladium poisoning, starting in his heart and seeping painfully into everything else. He almost longs for the purple-blue pain to take him again. Tony doesn’t remember the last time he ate.

***

Bruce has memorized the labels on his bottles of antibiotics almost as thoroughly as he had memorized the curve of Pepper’s waist and the lines of Tony’s shoulders. He wakes up in a cold sweat sometimes, feeling their lips on his, and it stings. Today, he ignores three calls from Natasha, who is desperately trying to bring him back.

***

Every day Pepper pulls her hair up into a bun, puts in her skirt and her heels, and runs Tony’s business. Every evening she goes home, to the apartment she rented and meditates the way Bruce taught her to in another life. She is, perversely, glad she left, even if the weight of it all is crushing.

***

_Hulk miss Pepper. Hulk miss Tony._

Bruce ignores this repeated chant because even if he went back now, they wouldn’t be there, not like they used to be.

***

“Tony’s gone,” Natasha says, her voice flat as usual but with a strange, sad twinge.

“Gone?” Bruce asks, “Where did he go?”

“He’s dead, Bruce,” she says, “suicide,” and Bruce feels the numbness spreading, and he wonders if Pepper cried.

***

He left it all to them – the mansion and the tower and the business and the fortune, everything he ever had he gave it to them to share.

“Will you come?” Pepper asks him, hating the brightness of the lights in the garage and the half-finished experiments from when Bruce was still here and the bloodstain most of all, “For the funeral?”

“We’ll see,” Bruce says, and Pepper knows it’s not just the static that’s making his voice so far away.

***

“This won’t last,” Bruce says, feeling the distance between them stretching though they’re only inches apart. 

“We could try,” she murmurs, face still flushed, “For him.”

Her bare skin isn’t quite the same when it’s not lit by the blue glow of the arc reactor.


End file.
